Sometimes working remotely and traveling the world is *exactly* as cool as it sounds.

Dawn Andres is a UX/UI Designer at CMP Group, a Spanish company based in Barcelona where Dawn and I are currently living. Although Dawn described her own career path as pretty linear, I noticed a lot of exploration. I loved hearing about the various turns that led Dawn here, like her teenage aspiration to be a National Geographic photographer, and her time as a radio DJ in college, where she co-hosted an indie-pop show, interviewing musicians like Bratmobile frontwoman, Allison Wolfe. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When you were 17, what did you want to be?

I was really into art and creative classes in high school, and I wanted to do something with art. Initially, I wanted to study photography, and be a National Geographic photographer. I still think back to this one moment that I knew I didn’t want to study photography. We had Career Day at school, and this photographer was set up, and I thought, “Perfect, I’m gonna go talk to him.” I’m looking through his portfolio, and he did weddings and advertising stuff, and I remember this ad. It was Levi’s or something, all these young people in the back of a truck with their jeans on. He told me, “This photo is a composite of this one and this one and I changed the background…” and I thought, “That’s not what I want to do.”

What is the When I Was 17 Project?

When I Was 17 is a blog series dedicated to collecting the varied stories of people's career paths, what they envisioned themselves doing when they were teenagers and how that evolved over the course of their lives. I started this project with the goal of illustrating that it's okay not to know exactly what you want to do when you're 17; many successful people didn't, and these are a few of their stories.